The current Skype Management and investors don't want to deal with Niklas Zennstrom or Janus Friis

Mike Volpi, past Joost CEO wanted to change Skype's underlying technology to SIP - knowing this would upset Skype's founders Zennstrom and Friis - Coincidentally about five years ago at ITEXPO Niklas Zennstrom was giving a keynote and at the end of the presentation Andy Voss, founder of Session Border Conrol company Sansay asked why Skype doesn't support SIP. Zennstrom replied accurately that there are far more Skype endpoints than SIP endpoints.

What amazes me the most about this situation is that to all the people who understand Skype, there is a tremendous amount of value in the company and it is worth fighting over tooth and nail. To those who don't understand it - eBay for example, there is limited value.

In the last two weeks I drove (well I was in the car anyway) for more than 1,500 miles meeting with tech companies in Montreal, Ontario, Massachusetts, Rochester, NY, Los Angeles and San Diego. The last stop on my latest trip was at CTIA where I saw dozens of companies from around the globe.

Most of my travels involve learning about companies in the communications and technology space and often advising them on how they can be more successful. Sometimes I get to see some very innovative solutions which I can't share at the time for a multitude of reasons (embargos, etc) and other times I get a firsthand look at things which I share as soon as I can.

The fact that FBI Director Robert Muller almost fell victim to an online banking phishing scam which he said was started with an authentic looking email should be very scary news for all of us. After all, this isn't a temp at the FBI, this is the person who is in charge of the organization we all trust to protect us from such scams. If we can't bank, shop and exchange goods and services online as efficiently as possible we all lose. While we should all be thrilled about the 33 arrested in an FBI phishing ring sting earlier this month dubbed operation "phish fry", there is a lot more work to do.

On a recent trip to Canada I sat down with Mitel CEO Don Smith and President and COO Paul Butcher to discuss the company, industry and future. The dynamic duo is exactly that, mixing copious amounts of humor and friendly verbal jabs (this time at each other and not me ;) ) with frank talk about technology and marketshare.

Avaya Purchasing Nortel

The issue of greatest importance was the demise of Nortel and sale to Avaya, since both are Canadian companies with a similar tradition of great engineering.

Don and Paul explained off the bat that they are excited to see two of their biggest competitors Nortel and Avaya merge as they have 100% channel/geographic/product overlap (may be a slight exaggeration but at least 85% is probably a "safer" estimate) and the two companies hated each other for 100 years.

Cisco has done a remarkable job pushing the telepresence market forward but on the low-end of the market the company left lots of room for smaller players such as Tandberg, Lifesize, etc to prosper while relying on Cisco's marketing and PR to carry them forward. Now Cisco is about to pick up Norway based Tandberg, a strong player in the video market for $3 billion in cash.

Obviously this deal is in line with the John Chamber's vision of video everywhere and moreover allows Cisco to control a large part of the video market. Cisco is now in the position now more than ever of being able to lower the prices of the video units it sells so as to move more routers and other data center products.

As international outsourcing claims more jobs, two things happen - unemployment in developed nations increases and companies lower their costs. As sad as this is for now unemployed workers, it is a byproduct of automation - the internet and IP communications. Moreover it accelerates during recessions. In order for the trend to cease, the standard of living has to increase in developing nations to a point where it doesn't make sense to move jobs away from developed countries.

In the year 2000 when society was in the midst of realizing how technology and the internet in particular was going to change the world, I noticed there was a need by companies and carriers to better understand the hosted communications space. There were a number of companies with very compelling business models being launched such as Congruency, the early pioneer and leader of the communication ASP movement.

Shortly after realizing the need for education in the market, TMC launched a magazine titled Communications ASP. The magazine was a hit with advertisers and readers for about six months until the VC community and the tech market as a whole seemed to turn on the term ASP" I haven't a clue to this day why the acronym wasn't accepted but it seemed to get lumped in with other technologies which were left for dead but emerged later - like "ecommerce," "VoIP" and others.